Case Law Details
In re Venbakkam Commandur Janardhanan (GST AAR Tamilnadu)
The Applicant has stated that the Law Weekly (established in 1914) is a Law Journal reporting judgments of the Madras High Court and Supreme Court of India and is cited by the Lawyers and the judges in the form of Citations in courts across the state. They have stated that they were registered dealer under the erstwhile Tamil Nadu Genera/ Sales Tax Act and Tamil Nadu Value Added tax Act. The applicant supplies printed journals/books every week and the same is also sold in electronic form in DVDs/CDs with a pen drive as security lock with software to use it as an application in computers and hand held electronic devices to search and retrieve judgments. It is also available on their website www.thelawweekly.com , They have stated that due to development in technology they supply e book of the printed version to their customers at their request. They have also stated that on supply of printed books/journals they have not collected any GST as it is exempt. However, for the supply of DVDs/CDs and pen drives they paid GST at the rate of 18% and subsequent to the issue of notification 13/2018 Central Tax(rate) dated 26.07.2018 the applicant has sought Advance ruling on the applicability of the above said notification for the supply of the electronic form of DVDs/CDs supplied by them. The applicant has also stated that they have entrusted the job of developing the e-book with software to M/s Sofist India and have paid the GST for the services rendered by them. They have also claimed input tax for the purchase of paper, ink, CD, Fen drive and other connected materials. They also stated that they have sufficient credit in their electronic ledger and their liability is being adjusted every month against the credit.
Notification No. 11/2017-C.T.(Rate) dated 28.06.2017 provides the applicable rates for various services. As per the Explanation given in the above entry, `e-books’ are electronic version of a printed book falling under the tariff item 4901 and supplied online which can be read on a computer or a hand held device, while in the case at hand, the contents supplied in the form of DVD/CD is a software which is used to access content containing the judgments of various fora, case laws Acts, etc which provides for searching using a particular case number/period/act/court or a combination of the above . The DVD/CDs do not contain electronic versions of the journals but an executable software application and therefore do not fall under the explanation of `e-book’ given in the said entry. Furthermore, in the case at hand as held in para 6.3 above, the initial supply of DVD/CD[8523] is supply of goods and hence the Notification do not have any application.
The applicant during personal hearing has stated that the renewal is charged separately without needing any more supply of DVDs etc and also they supply an online version of it which is available on their website with access through user id- password for specific periods. The user with the password can access the database of all the case laws, judgment etc with search criteria that they can specify including the specific journal numbers etc. Supply of this access to the online database on their website is a supply of service classifiable under SAC 998431 On-line text based information such as on-line books, on-line newspapers and periodicals, on-line directories and mailing lists.
As already brought out in para supra, e-book as per the explanation given in the notification itself are those books which are digitalized into a single machine readable file in any format such as .doc, .txt, .pdf etc and read on a computer or a hand held device through some specific software. In the case at hand, the supply involves access to an on-line database hosted on the website of the applicant. Thus, it is evident that the above are not ‘e-books’ but supply of access to an online database online text based information [SAC 998431] and therefore the entry at Sl.No. 22 of the Notification No. 11/2017-C.T.(Rate) dated 28.06.2017 is not applicable to the case at hand.
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